The European parliament is “one of the most misunderstood institutions in the world”, argues Carry on Brussels, a fly-on-the-wall documentary that exists in a kind of paradox. Had more effort been made to explain exactly what MEPs do prior to 2016, then Brexit voters might not have been so convinced of their uselessness; then again, a film about an institution running smoothly and fairly doesn’t pack a sufficient dramatic punch. So here we are, fiddling while Brussels burns – for the UK, at least. Director Christian Trumble spins comedy and tragedy into a watchable, if at times teeth-grindingly frustrating three-part series that pulls off a remarkably balanced portrait of seven MEPs from across the political spectrum, all working to very different ends.
This first episode sets out its W1A-ish tone – we hear that SNP MEP Alyn Smith has booked “the third-floor coffee lounge” for a charity mixer, and he grumbles that Ukip aren’t mingling and are only there for the free wine – primarily by concentrating on the most embattled of the bunch. Seb Dance, a young Labour MEP, is notorious for holding up a sign reading: “He’s lying to you” behind Nigel Farage as he spoke in the EU parliament. As a result, he says, he gets tweets calling him a “knob”, a “big girl’s blouse” and a “shitbag”, and strangers offering to take him outside. He’s earnest and so upset by Brexit that, at one point, it moves him to tears. Dance has spent six months working on getting a sustainability report passed. We follow him to the crucial vote.
One person whose support he won’t get is Ukip’s Gerard Batten, who rejects the EU system entirely, and thinks that legislating to reduce the damage done to the environment by red meat consumption, for example, is Europe sticking its nose in. He doesn’t eat red meat himself, he adds. Doesn’t like it. Prefers chicken and fish. Imagine Farage with every last drop of charisma drained from him, cross that with Alan Partridge in his Linton Travel Tavern years, and you’ve got Batten, whose inadvertent comedy becomes less and less funny as the programme goes on. He speaks at a joint committee hearing for almost twice his allotted speech time; when his microphone is eventually cut off, he declares that he is being discriminated against because he’s not a pro-EU leftie. This supposed denial of his democratic rights – his claims are quite clearly shown on camera to be untrue – is theatre and spectacle, designed to cultivate an image of victimhood and to disrupt proceedings as much as possible. Whatever you think about Ukip, it has proven an effective tactic, although Batten seems oblivious to just how embarrassing it looks when viewers are able to watch it play out from concept to execution.
But then, he seems an oblivious kind of person. His 120-page alternative Brexit strategy, Taking Control, runs into hiccup after hiccup, ironically making it difficult for him to take control of anything, particularly his own report. The computer doesn’t work. He can’t print it out to send to journalists because it’s 120 pages long, and he doesn’t have the budget. He doesn’t bother talking to such mainstream media “propaganda organs” as the Guardian, the Times or Independent anyway, although he doesn’t mind the Daily Express’s propaganda organ, because it agrees with him, so that’s “fair enough”. We see him humming Land of Hope and Glory as he puts out his mini union jacks (“I’m the flag captain”). Like the other Ukip MEPs, he’s fighting Brussels from the inside, but if this is the extent of it, he makes a sorry case for the resistance.
Of course I would say that. I’m part of a propaganda organ; one that Batten doesn’t like. And one of the skills of this documentary is that I suspect it’s a Yanny-or-Laurel affair. If you want to see Dance as a member of the leftie metropolitan elite – and his little “Let’s Dance” moment, the framed “He’s lying to you” sign in his office, make it easy – then you can. If you want to see Batten as a bumbling buffoon who blusters about common sense despite appearing to be entirely lacking in it, then that, too, is perfectly possible. Carry on Brussels does not so much challenge preconceptions, as allow itself to be moulded to fit the ones that already exist. But wasn’t that what got us into this mess in the first place?
